Nancy Nelson Hodges is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Dr. Hodges’ areas of interest are the contextual factors of dress, including dress in culture, society, and history, the social psychology of dress and apparel consumption, and the production of knowledge within the clothing and textiles field. Dr. Hodges’ research focuses on gender as related to dress and the experiences of women. She is currently working on a second, five-year project funded by the NC Agricultural Research Service on the changing workforce of North Carolina’s textile sector, and specifically the link between women, employment and education for the apparel and textile industries. She is also the Project Director and Co-PI of a three year USDA Higher Education Challenge Grant. The project will result in the creation of learning modules designed to introduce global industry-based issues and opportunities in the undergraduate consumer, apparel and retail classroom.
Hodges has published her research in several top academic journals in the field, including the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal and the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. She has also published in the Women’s Studies International Forum and the International Journal of Gender and Sexuality. She has presented her research at numerous juried national and international conferences in the US and Europe where she has received awards for her research. She has been a member of the Executive Board of the International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA) and served as the Vice President for Planning for ITAA from 2005-2007. Hodges has also served on the Editorial Board for the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal and is presently on the Advisory Board of the new journal Fashion Practice: The Journal of Design, Creative Process and the Fashion Industry.
Dr. Hodges earned her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and has been at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro since 1998. She teaches undergraduate courses on the cultural, historical, and social psychological factors of dress, and graduate courses on qualitative methodology, literature and thought, consumer research, and dress and identity. She was awarded the Mary Francis Stone School of Human Environmental Sciences award for Outstanding Teaching in 2003.

Purpose – Recent liberalization of the world's textile and apparel trade policies and the consequent changes in trade patterns posited threats to smaller textile- and apparel-exporting nations, including Thailand. Thus it is important to understand h...

Clothing and textiles research is examined within a futuring framework to discuss potential avenues for development of thought within the field. A philosophical perspective linking ontology, epistemology, and methodology is posited as important to ex...

The purpose of this study was to understand what textile art means in Irish culture and society through the lens of women who create it. The methodology used in this study was founded in part on the phenomenological exploration of meaning within live...

The authors explore the ways in which the Internet functions to communicate about cross-dressing as part of a larger cultural discourse surrounding gender. As a widely used tool to dialogue on the topic of appearance, the Internet also helps to estab...

Purpose – To examine the impact of changes in the US textile and apparel industries on employment patterns at the state level compared with the nation as a whole during the period of 1997-2003. Design/methodology/approach – Secondary data sources wer...

This paper illustrates how critical thinking techniques could be used in teaching aesthetics. Exploring unfamiliar territory and moving freely between reflective and active thought processes are components important to both aesthetics and critical th...

As we move toward the second decade of the 21st century, the timing seems pertinent to take a focused look at the future. In the second issue of its second volume in 1984, the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal (CTRJ) published a future-focused i...

How will we dress in the future? How will we teach in the future? How will we design in the future? A special focused issue on the future in a field such as ours necessarily encompasses a broad range of approaches to the concept of ?futuring.? In thi...

This cross-cultural study illustrates how products selected for their basic similarities are distinguished in use by cultural context. Jeans, a product manufactured in both South Korea and the United States, were selected as the research stimuli. Sub...

This research examined the content and outcome of an educational intervention program designed to foster sun protective awareness and behaviors among young adolescents. Awareness of sun protection qualities, as well as preferences and stated intentio...

The focus of this research was to determine what similarities or differences in meaning develop when one product, blue jeans, developed in one culture, is used in another. Students’ perceptions of blue jeans in the United States and Korea were the fo...

This paper explores how popular women’s magazines promoted change in women’s roles and reform in dress during the nineteenth century. Selected writings about women and dress for Demorest’s Monthly Magazine by its editor, Jane Cunningham Croly, are ex...

Choosing a college major can be a complex decision and one that has the potential to determine an individual's professional future. The purpose of this study was to develop a theoretical framework for mapping the decision-making process. Grounded in ...

Much like deciding where to go to college, for many students, deciding what to major in is a complex, multi-dimensional process wherein several different variables may influence the final decision. Understanding the motivations behind the decision to...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine and interpret post-socialist consumer experiences in relation to clothing consumption practices when consumers shop, acquire, and wear clothing and other fashion-related products. Design/methodology/a...

In this article, interviews with 25 contemporary Irish women textile artists form the basis of an exploration of women’s experiences with creative expression. An interpretive framework that highlights key socio-cultural and gender issues is used to c...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of cognitive- versus chronological-age factors in activewear apparel advertisements targeting female baby boomers in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 50 female particip...

This qualitative study explores recent textile and apparel industry dynamics from the point of view of the news media to understand how such dynamics are presented to the general public. North Carolina, having been home to many jobs in these industri...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of displaced female textile sector workers.
Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach to data collection and interpretation forms the methodological basis of the study. In-...